Create a Thematic Mapping API prototype for metrics data
We have been offered help with prototyping new visualizations for our metrics data. Rachel Binx suggested trying out the Thematic Mapping API (http://thematicmapping.org/) which is based on the Google Earth Plug-In (http://www.google.com/intl/en/earth/explore/products/plugin.html) for displaying how many users we have per country.
Requiring the Google Earth Plug-In (only available for Windows and Mac OS X) and JavaScript for the Thematic Mapping API won't make this prototype a replacement of our current graphs and visualizations. But there may be situations when we want to impress people with our data and shiny visualizations. That's what this prototype is supposed to be for.
Creating a Thematic Mapping API prototype is a multi-step process:
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Create a prototype that displays the data of a single date from a Google spreadsheet.
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Extend the prototype to display how usage changes over time by reading an extended spreadsheet that doesn't only have data for a single date, but for, say, one month or one year.
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Extend the prototype to let users customize what part of the spreadsheet data to display (daily direct users, daily bridge users, ratio of Tor users to Internet users, etc.) by making the website dynamic.
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Connect the prototype to the same database that the metrics website uses to feed it with live data.
I'm going to post a link with code for item 1 in that list once I have a Trac number; see comment below. I didn't start hacking on items 2 to 4 yet.